“The eye with which God sees me 
is the same eye with which I see God.
God’s eye and my eye are one eye.
one seeing, one knowing, one loving.”

Meister Eckhart

This morning I picked up Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice. The essay that caught me up is from Chapter 2, “Collective Consciousness.”

In this moment I miss our holy teacher profoundly. It occurs to me that by reading his words again, I have come into his presence.  His consciousness lives on in his words. I think he would say that this is essentially what happens in prayer when we become present to one another in the collective consciousness, or in Buddhism, the “one mind.”

Thich Nhat Hanh says, “…with a Sangha [community], whether of two or five or one hundred people like us, when we simultaneously practice sending spiritual energy, then that energy is magnified and much more effective….if we have a Sangha that is free and solid then the energy we can send together will certainly be greater.”

In another life I was a Catholic sister. In the days before the Vatican II reforms I knew this experience of the “one mind” to be true, and I relished common meditation, even at 5 a.m. Years after the younger members had abandoned the practice, I visited a convent of traditional, older members with whom I was expected to meditate- at 5 a.m. I entered the chapel with a good book to read, unconvinced of the efficacy of this archaic practice. “I might as well read the scripture text for the day,” I thought. I read, and immediately was lost in meditation on the passage; indeed, soon lost in contemplation. My silent connection with the meditators beside me was palpable. In our everyday lives we had little in common, but in this sacred space we were one.

Cyber Community, shall we meditate together with the intention of sending the power of peace where it is needed? 

Breathing in peace
Releasing violence.
May it be so.